Who was your favourite character in Squid Game?
Spoilers ahead: Ok so I wrestled with this response. Because there's my favourites as in the adorable cupcakes whose cute little faces I just want to squish (Ali, Sae-byeok, Ji-yeong) and then there's the ones I think are the most compelling, well written, well acted, essential to the plot/themes etc and those ones are not necessarily people I like. I think people have spoken a lot about the adorable cupcakes and my answer will be exactly the same so instead I'll focus on the second question:
Cho Sang-woo - Ok, listen. Hear me out. He is viewed as the villain by a lot of people and yes, he does horrible things. But I honestly think his character disturbs people so much because a lot of us would act in the same way in that situation and that frightens us. I think his character brought in a lot of moral ambiguity and complexity which made the show so interesting . Partly because of the fact that unlike the other characters, he had a well paying and high flying job and he fucked it all up due to greed. And secondly because he points out the fact that while Gi-hun may genuinely be devastated at the loss of his friends, he is also hiding behind Sang-woo because Sang-woo does the dirty work. Gi-hun may be a good guy, but Sang-woo reminds us he is knowingly benefiting from someone else's ruthless behaviours and when you look at the overarching theme of a capitalist critique, that's a highly relevant point for a lot of us in wealthy nations. And this is all brought to life so beautifully because of Park Hae-soo's performance which was in my opinion the best in the show. He was phenomenal.
Hwang Jun-ho - I think his character was crucial to the whole show because it gave us a window into the machinery around the Squid Game. Also it could have been quite samey if they'd rattled through all the games really quickly and just focused on the players so whenever his character came on it was a break for the audience, something different to explore. For some reason it gave me kind of Die Hard vibes! I think because they are both not typical "action heroes" - they are more sensitive, they are genuinely in pain when they're injured because they're not invincible, they spend most of their energy trying to hide rather than fight. And I like that in a hero. He used his intelligence and creativity to get him through and the whole time he was guided by his love for his brother.
Jang Deok-su - another one whose character is a total prick but I found them highly compelling. Unlike Sang-woo there was no real moral ambiguity with him. He was a bad guy inside the games and outside. But watching it he was the one character where I was most curious about how he got to where he is. Because if you watch, the times when he is most angry or where he lashes out are times when he feels rejected, insulted, betrayed. And obviously I am nothing like him but I do relate to reacting in anger when you're actually experiencing hurt because you don't know how to process and manage hurt. So I think despite his toughness and brutality, he was probably the most thin skinned and insecure of all the characters and that's a hard thing to get across in the writing and acting. It is actually really difficult to create a villain or a bully without straying into either a distasteful redemption arc or a cartoon of a villain with no human qualities. I think Deok-su was a great example of a bully who was clearly not a good person and didn't have any real growth but was realistic and fleshed out.
